CLEVELAND — The past two times the G.O.P. has suffered an election loss—and, going by the week so far, sorry, Republicans, it’s headed for another—one faction has said the party needs to moderate its politics and move to the left, while another faction has said the party needs to offer true conservatism and move to the right. Donald Trump, an accidental radical, thinks both sides are wrong and has campaigned on that basis, going both ways at once. He has moved the party to the right with outlandish counter-terrorism proposals, but he has moved it to the left on economics, voicing what the Republican donor class sees as heresies on trade, entitlements, and—because of immigration—labor.

This makes words like “left” and “right” and “extreme” and “moderate” trickier than normal in this election. A strong bipartisan consensus in U.S. politics favors “bold leadership” (to quote Paul Ryan) on the global stage, ever lower trade barriers, and legal immigration rates at about 1 million per year. This is called moderate, because it is in keeping with existing policy. To shrink our military footprint worldwide, to impose tariffs, or to suggest a slowing of immigration is called extreme, because it is a departure from existing policy. Is it a rightwing or leftwing extreme? Depends on whom you ask. Either way, I’d argue that keeping a foot on the gas is not always a form of moderation.

“As the convention winds down, it looks even less likely today than it
did on Monday that Trump will be rewarded further.”

During this primary season, it was Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders who benefitted from challenging a consensus. As much enthusiasm as Sanders managed to generate, though, he voiced few if any policy heresies against the left. For a while, he stuck to rejecting open borders, which he probably still would reject in practice, but in his rhetoric he walked this back. Trump, on the other hand, kept the heresies coming: on trade, on foreign policy, on immigration, and even on former president George W. Bush, whom he accused of having lied us into war. This was a huge gamble, and Trump was rewarded for it, in many ways deservedly so.

As the convention winds down, though, it looks even less likely today than it did on Monday that Trump will be rewarded further. The balloons for Thursday are collected in nets high above the Quicken Loans Arena, preparing to be dropped, but the stumbles on the ground makes them at best sad and at worst ominous. (Will they turn out to be basketballs?) Trump needed a great week, with an event that projected competence, judgment, optimism, decency, inclusivity, vigor, dynamism, and teamwork. You may have noticed that such results haven’t been forthcoming. The party is torn between its old guard and new Trumpian upstarts, and, in an attempt hold the crowd together, team Trump drove up with a truck full of red meat and tossed its contents into the crowd. The party faithful chanting “Lock her up!” about Hillary Clinton may only have reinforced the fear of zealotry among on-the-fence viewers at home.

The speeches have varied dramatically in quality, few landing on the good side. No one wants to hear from Asa Hutchinson (governor of Arkansas), and no one knows what he said. The attempts to humanize Trump with stories of his decency have been downright alarming in the lack of evidence presented. (He apparently was the first to call Tiffany Trump, his daughter, when a friend of hers had died. Okay. Anything else? Anyone? Anything?) Many of the speeches, once more, only barely mentioned Trump, or did so in a perfunctory manner. Even the appearance of Chris Christie, Trump’s loyal partner, who put Hillary Clinton on “trial” before the crowd and solicited “guilty” or “not guilty verdicts” (spoiler—his conviction rate in the room was 100 percent), deviated from Trump’s own policy pronouncements, suggesting that the U.S. ought to be more hardline toward Vladimir Putin and Bashar Al-Assad.

The question becomes what happens next, when Hillary wins? The establishment wing thinks that Trumpism will collapse in ruins, and those who kept their heads will rise, with a dramatic but gracious “I told you so,” and lead a return to the traditional Republican Party that everyone knows and loves. Paul Ryan will be able to endorse the nominee for real, and we’ll see old faces once more—George W. Bush, Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney—all showing up at the 2020 convention to enchant Americans and propel a hero like John Kasich or Marco Rubio into the Oval Office. They are welcome to dream that, as an alternative to tear-soaked pillows, but reality is likely to go elsewhere.

On the convention floor Tuesday night, I encountered Jeff Sessions, the Alabama senator who represents Trumpism without Trump (i.e. the policy positions minus the inconsistencies and sociopathy), and asked him what was at stake for his party. He took his time answering, starting over again once or twice, probably because the real answer is that what’s at stake is whether it becomes a Sessions-style populist party or Ryan-style business party. Eventually, Sessions said he hoped the party would understand the importance of appealing to families that live on less than $50,000 a year. “Romney got killed in that voting group,” he said. “It’s critical for the party to reach out beyond its base to the people who do the right things every day but are struggling to get by.”

It could work. An economically liberal (or less libertarian) and socially conservative party is a plausible identity to stake out, if someone dares do it again in 2020, minus the racial divisiveness. And minus the crazy. Shortly after I spoke with Sessions, Ben Carson took the stage, ignored his teleprompter, and informed the public that Hillary Clinton has connections, via Saul Alinsky, to Lucifer. “Are we willing to elect someone as president who has as their role model somebody who acknowledges Lucifer?” Carson asked. “Think about that.” I expect many middle-of-the-road voters will, indeed, think about that.